'The Magician's Book,' by Laura Miller

Reyhan Harmanci

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, December 21, 2008

The Magician's Book

A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia

By Laura Miller

(Little, Brown & Co.; 311 pages; $25.99)

In "The Magician's Book," Salon magazine co-founder and New York Times Book Review contributor Laura Miller takes on a surprisingly difficult assignment: dissecting her lingering fascination with all things Narnia.

She examines her continuing love of the C.S. Lewis classic "Chronicles of Narnia" series through a number of lenses: as a young girl, as a nonbeliever, as a literary critic and as a journalist, interviewing fellow "Narnia" lovers such as Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Lethem, combing through Lewis biographies and nonfiction works and even traveling to Lewis' environs in England.

Balancing "Narnia" exposition with new material in this book is not easy. Millions of people have enjoyed the books and (blasphemy!) the movies, but how many adults have picked up "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" since they were in elementary school? Miller manages to provide the right amount of information, but at times, "The Magician's Book" plods frustratingly slowly through the necessary "Narnia" plot summaries and doubles back on itself, repeating observations on Miller's experience as a young girl consumed with the books.

But when Miller hits a fertile bit of ground - her chapters on Lewis' relationship with his family and his long friendship with "Ring"-master J.R.R. Tolkien are especially interesting - her lucid prose and varied reference materials do a fantastic job sketching out the complicated terrain of Lewis' celebrated creation.

One thing is abundantly clear: Miller loves "Narnia." Really, really loves "Narnia." She writes that the best way to explain her reaction to Lewis' stories as a 9-year-old is the moment when the "Wizard of Oz" movie goes from monochrome to color. "If you asked me at the same age why I liked 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' better than, say, 'Little Women' or any other story more like my own, I wouldn't have been able to answer; it seemed crazy to prefer anything else."

Lewis' stories were many things to Miller, but a Christian tract was not one of them. When as a teenager she learned that the story of the lion Aslan and Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy Pevensie was actually the story of Jesus' resurrection, she immediately disavowed the Chronicles. "When I could no longer kid myself that Narnia actually existed, it remained the province of my imagination where I felt the most free," she writes. Learning about the Christian subtext "ruined even that."

But over time, Miller found ways of reconciling what she loves about the Chronicles with the author's intended meanings. Miller methodically builds the argument that in reimagining Jesus' story, Lewis' work ceases to be religious in nature. Certainly, if it was intended to win converts, Miller finds examples of people who, like herself, were turned off by the notion that their children's books were proselytizing.

"The Magician's Book" is hard to categorize. Like a long-simmering stew, Miller has thrown in bits from years of professional and personal reckoning with her beloved Narnia. Her writing is clear, with crisp individual sentences flowing into comprehensible paragraphs, but the overall effect is slightly disorienting. I read the book in several sittings, and had to reread large chunks because I had lost my place in the narrative. Broken into three main parts and 27 chapters, "The Magician's Book" demands concentration.

But Miller's wide-ranging interests are put to good use. To write about Lewis' life, she read his autobiography, his biography, his works of literary criticism - and is able to use bits from Yeats, Freud, Camus, science fiction reference books and many more sources. She also interviewed contemporary children's book writers (and notes that the "children's literature" label is not meant to be a disparaging title).

"The Magician's Book" ultimately deals with the alchemy between reader and writer, the mysterious process that made descriptions of the lush land of Narnia became real in Miller's mind. While Miller looks critically at the "Narnia" series and its author (she spends a whole chapter on Lewis' racist depictions of Narnia villains), she never loses sight of Lewis' greatest vocational gift: He read vociferously, with a determinedly open mind and a willingness to be swept away by words. Many children read like that instinctively, but Miller does a good job of reminding adults that it's still possible.

Latest from the SFGATE homepage:

Click below for the top news from around the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our newsletters to be the first to learn about breaking news and more. Go to 'Sign In' and 'Manage Profile' at the top of the page.